Focus on biodiversity, health and wellbeing: Synthesis and Review
This is a modal window.
The media could not be loaded, either because the server or network failed or because the format is not supported.
Formal Metadata
| Title |
| |
| Title of Series | ||
| Number of Parts | 20 | |
| Author | ||
| License | CC Attribution 3.0 Unported: You are free to use, adapt and copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in adapted or unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor. | |
| Identifiers | 10.5446/39444 (DOI) | |
| Publisher | ||
| Release Date | ||
| Language |
Content Metadata
| Subject Area | ||
| Genre | ||
| Abstract |
|
00:00
Electric power distributionBrennebeneVideoComputer animation
00:03
Ozone layerOzone depletionPlanetGround stationPaperTurningFocus (optics)BauxitbergbauVisibilityOrbital period
00:53
SurveillanceGround stationPaperPower (physics)
01:32
Ground stationComputer animationDrawing
01:36
Contrast (vision)FullingHourSpeckle imagingPlanetBahnelementPickup truckButterfly valve
02:23
Linkage (mechanical)FACTS (newspaper)Energy levelLoudspeakerMountain
03:08
PlanetClimate change
03:29
PlanetDestroyerClimate changeDampfbügeleisenSpare partController (control theory)
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:03
Between 2012 and 2015, ERL hosted a focus issue on biodiversity, health and wellbeing. Together our papers have had over 40,000 downloads. In the same period, over 4,000 more species have become critically endangered, while our species now reaches 7 billion
00:24
population. Our consumption is unprecedented. Look at this beautiful Andean landscape, it's almost impossible to imagine that only a few kilometres from here is one of the largest open-scale mines in the world, visible from space. In the face of our destruction of our planet,
00:43
the UN has developed a concept called ecosystem services for health, trying to place everything that's going on on the planet around us as important for our health and wellbeing. Three of our papers dealt with this kind of view of the ecosystem as a service to us, either a disservice or a positive service to us. One looking at land use changes
01:06
and biodiversity loss, one looking at policy making and the complexity of policy making in Belgium, looking at both negative and positive biodiversity aspects. Another looked at infectious
01:21
disease surveillance and parasite sharing. We had two papers which took a completely different epistemological approach, looking at indigenous understanding and indigenous people's view of the ecosystem around them as a horizontal relationship where other species and other
01:42
elements of the planet had equal rights with us as a species on our own. This contrasts so strongly this indigenous and rural image of the world with what conservationists are now trying to propose to conserve what's left of biodiversity. Conservationists are using what in itself is a
02:03
controversial medical strategy called triage to choose which species should live and which should die, trying to think about whether the species have genetic value and are genetically rare or perhaps that they have a utility for humans. But how can we do this when we look at
02:22
these species, these beautiful butterflies or this beautiful eagle which is not either genetically unique nor particularly rare nor is considered to be very useful to us as humans, but doesn't she also have a right to the planet? And if we go to looking at ecosystems, how do we choose
02:41
between this river ecosystem or this mountain arid ecosystem, both incredibly biodiverse but in completely different ways? And how do we deal with the fact that we don't even understand the levels or complexity of the biodiversity linkages in the environment around us?
03:01
50% of people are now living in cities and it will be cities that decide the future, but if you look at this ancient city and we go back to our ancient understanding, this is the Celtic tree of life, doesn't it look so similar to this beautiful living tree that's so important for indigenous people in the Andes? As we close the issue, leaders all over the world are meeting
03:27
in Paris to decide what to do about our destruction of the planet through climate change and isn't it time that we start to think and respect more our history and the knowledge of indigenous people and go back to a knowledge of ourselves as part of nature,
03:43
not controllers of nature, the highly ironic position we've got as both the destroyers and the deciders of the future of our planet.